1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a promotion system for sales promotion of commodities of automatic vending machines by issuing points when such commodities are sold and to a method of management of the automatic vending machines by the promotion system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional method of collectively managing the states of automatic vending machines by a management center, there is a known method which transmits management information such as sales information, failure information and the like of the automatic vending machine to the management center by communication equipment which is provided to the automatic vending machine.
But, the aforesaid conventional method was hard to become widespread because of high costs of providing the communication equipment to the individual automatic vending machines and high operation costs such as a communication charge.
The inventor has proposed in Japanese Patent Application No. 11-280034 and Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-210217 a promotion system by which point information having points encrypted is shown to a commodity purchaser when a commodity is sold, the purchaser merely sends the shown point information to a center unit by a portable telephone, the center unit deciphers the point information and adds points, and a service corresponding to the added points is provided to the commodity purchaser.
Here, the aforesaid point information is sent from the portable telephone to the center unit by a packet communication function of the portable telephone, but an information content of the point information is generally smaller than an information content of a single packet, namely a charging unit information content, according to the packet communication function of the portable telephone.